Aftermath
by spidersaremykryptonite
Summary: Despite nodding along with what Antonio said at Dean Masters' house, Jay isn't expecting it to sneak up on him. Guy was a criminal, he didn't know him, and it's not really anything he hasn't seen before. Which is maybe why he should have known better. Oneshot. Tag to 1x04 "Now is Always Temporary."
Despite nodding along with what Antonio said at Dean Masters' house, Jay isn't expecting it to sneak up on him. Guy was a criminal, he didn't know him, and it's not really anything he hasn't seen before. Which is maybe why he should have known better.

He goes home after they close the case, unlocking the door of his apartment and tossing his jacket on the couch. He grabs a beer from the fridge, popping it open and clicking on the TV, sinking into the couch and running a hand through his hair. The TV is still muted from last time he turned it off, tuned to the news station and just as he takes a swig of his beer the traffic update finishes, switching to the news station where a pretty blonde in a power suit starts talking, and then a photo appears in the top right corner – a photo of Dean Masters. Jay lowers his beer. Masters looks young in the picture, with tousled dark hair and dark eyes, white teeth showing through lips pulled back in a wide smile. He looks happy, light.

Jay slides his beer onto the coffee table, rubbing at his temple. Masters didn't look young, or happy, or light when Jay saw him, and Jay hears his own voice echoing callously in his mind – " _Or he was just tripping and talking nonsense. I mean, did you see his pupils? Guy was gakked out of his mind"_ – and Voight's sharp response – " _We got a known suspect, took his own life rather than face something heavy-duty_."

He finds himself vividly remembering the tight sharp panic in Masters' face, the way his voice edged up and seemed to fray, the way he jerked the gun like he kept forgetting it was in his hand. And then he handed the girl to Erin and Jay remembers thinking it was over, and then Masters' face smoothed out and his muscles all relaxed and he remembers that there was something familiar about that already, something not quite right that made Jay's pulse jump before he knew why. _"I'm dead anyway."_ And in that second Jay realized what it was about Masters' posture that was bothering him, but too late, because as Jay started to take half a step forward Masters pulled the gun up to his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The shock of it kept him standing still for a moment, gun still half raised towards the empty space splashed red, over the crumpled body. Then he took a breath, dropped the gun, swallowed, and walked away.

The girl was bundled away by ambulance and Jay and Erin sat on the stairs and listened to Antonio, and Jay glanced over at Erin with a slight raise of an eyebrow as though to check how she felt, because Jay was so sure that he himself was completely fine.

Except that now Jay shakes himself from the memory remembered too vividly, blinking away shadows of imagined red, and feels a low twisting ache in his stomach, and a slight pressure in his chest. He feels suddenly restless, and pushes up off the couch to wander the room, which becomes pacing, as if he could out walk the oxymoronic jumpy heaviness in his bones. Unbidden, the face of the first enemy soldier he saw take his own life rises in his mind. It was early in his first tour, and his unit was in the middle of a night raid on a little village that was harboring the enemy, and Jay and Mouse had cornered the man. They had their fingers on their triggers, ready to take him down if he wouldn't surrender as their prisoner, but they never had the chance, as the man had raised his own gun to his head in a swift motion and the shot echoed, the muzzle flash violently bright in their night vision goggles, and the spray of blood wasn't red but another shade of greenish-grey as the man's body dropped with a light thud to the dirt floor. The first, but not the last time that Jay watched someone eat their own bullet rather than surrender.

Once, it wasn't an enemy. Once, it was a Ranger, from another unit. Jay knew his name was Donald, and the boys in his unit called him Ducky, and Jay had met him once – his laugh, Jay remembered, was loud and full and deep, and he carried a photograph of a family barbeque with his parents and his younger sister and him with his arm around his girlfriend. Ducky's unit and Jay's were part of an attack front, and Jay and Ducky were the snipers, positioned at angles into the little valley the camp sat in. While their teammates went in on the ground, Jay and Ducky picked off targets from above. It was after the action was over in the valley, and Jay was scoping around to make sure they hadn't missed anything when he caught the movement by Ducky's perch, too late to make a difference as he tried to find a shot, finding Ducky among the enemy just in time to see the wild look on his face as Ducky pulled out his gun and fired, once, twice, three times at the men trying to take him, before his face went blank and he fired one more shot. This time, the spray of blood was made black, a silhouette, by the first rays of dawn.

Once, it wasn't an enemy, and it wasn't instead of surrender. Jay can't remember how he ended up in that tent, because it sure wasn't his. He just remembers walking in to find a man crying silently, with the muzzle of his gun pressed to his temple. Jay froze, and the man looked up at Jay, and Jay cried out "Don't!" and the man said, "I'm sorry." The blood was very red on the canvas of the tent.

He's still pacing, faster now, as he tries to pull himself from these nightmare fragments, but they cling to him, and now the pacing is just making him feel dizzy and sick, or else the memories are. The lingering of the one swallow of beer he took tastes sour at the back of his throat, and the quiet of his apartment buzzes shrilly in his ears, the absence of sound reminding him too much of the disorienting silence after an explosion.

Almost without thinking, he snatches his jacket off the couch, grabbing his keys off the little table and lets the door bang shut behind him. He locks the door, sets off down the stairs, and it at his car in the parking lot before he realizes he doesn't know where he's planning on going. _"Don't be afraid to talk to somebody, anybody, me."_ Jay swallows hard, frowning at the keys in his hand, hair prickling on the back of his neck and anxiety flickering in his chest. He takes a deep breath and gets in his car, trying to force himself to stop examining every rooftop for the shadow of a rifle as he drives.

He's been to Antonio's house once before. When he pulls up, the windows glow a welcoming yellow in the dark, Antonio's car parked in the driveway. Jay watches the house for a few minutes before he can bring himself to get out of the car and shuffle up to the front door with his hands in his pockets. He knocks three times, sharply with his knuckles, then turns half away from the door, shifting in place. He looks up as the door is pulled open, letting light spill onto the little deck interrupted by the long shadow thrown by Antonio.

"Jay?"

"Hey." Jay furrows his brows glancing down, realizing he didn't plan anything to say. "Hey, I was just, uh-" He loses that sentence before he even really starts it, but Antonio jumps in.

"Come on in," he says, pulling the door open wider and stepping back. Antonio leads him to the kitchen, where Laura sits at a table, dark hair obscuring her face, doing to the crossword. "Laura, honey, you remember Jay."

Laura looks up and smiles at Jay, and the easy happiness in her face makes Jay remember not that long ago when she was made small and sharp by panic. A look Jay can't quite decipher passes between Antonio and Laura, but Jay can guess at the general idea when Laura slides gracefully out of her chair, pecking Antonio on the cheek and says "Good to see you again, Jay," before wandering out of the room. Antonio pulls open the fridge, and there's the familiar clinking as he pulls two bottles of beer out, letting the door swing shut as he passes one to Jay and drops into the chair Laura had been sitting in. Jay sits in one of the other chairs, and a small silence falls, broken only by the sound of Antonio cracking open his beer and taking a drink.

"So it snuck up on you," Antonio says finally, all matter of fact. Jay frowns, toying with his unopened beer on the table.

"I guess."

"You wanna tell me about it?"

Jay swallows.

"It's not… it's not really about Masters, you know? It's just that it reminds me of…"

"Someone else," Antonio inserts tentatively when Jay trails off. Jay nods, letting his eyes fall shut, rubbing at the space between his eyebrows.

"I thought I'd be fine, you know, cause it's nothing I haven't seen before. But I can't stop thinking about them. The others."

If Jay had been looking at Antonio, he might have seen a flicker of something like surprise, or shock, coupled immediately after with a painful sorrow. By the time Jay does open his eyes and look hesitantly over at his mentor, Antonio has smoothed his face into one of impassivity, looking back at Jay with gentle but slightly inquisitive eyes.

"Sometimes the best way to stop thinking about something it to say it, get it out of your system. Or so I hear."

Something in Jay recoils fearfully at the idea, because the war is something he doesn't talk about. Not with anyone but Mouse. But Mouse isn't here right now, and Jay came to Antonio's for something. What, if not this? Besides, the thought of returning to his empty and silent apartment with these thoughts and memories swirling around honestly scares him. So he opens his mouth, and starts talking.

He addresses his beer mostly, afraid to look Antonio in the eye as he recounts the stories about the nameless, faceless, enemies whose blood sprays from their own bullet in his mind, about Ducky and how he's never felt the same about sunrises since, and about the flicker of fear that stalled his hand every time he went to walk into a tent. His voice trembles in a few places, and his knuckles whiten around the brown glass of the bottle, until he runs out of words and feels empty, and falls silent, still staring at the unopened beer.

"I'm sorry you have to carry that around, Jay," Antonio says to the quiet, reaching out to lay a hand on Jay's arm, and Jay scrunches up his face, throat tight, because it's the first time anyone has said something like that to him.

* * *

They sit quietly for a long while as Jay regains his composure. He does finally open his beer, and they drink together and talk turns to lighter things, and then Jay goes home to his apartment, still empty, still quiet, but it sounds less like the ringing buzz of aftermath. He doesn't sleep well that night, but he does sleep.

Antonio climbs the stairs with heavy limbs and crawls into bed, holding Laura's small body closely to his, breathing her in, and she wraps thin arms around him, and doesn't ask, though she wants to. That night, Antonio dreams of faceless soldiers, of gunshots, and of the spray of blood, and wakes feeling unrested with the taste of metal in his mouth.

* * *

 **AN: Re-watching "Now is Always Temporary" and this happened. Review! Tell me what you think, what you like, or any random thought that pops into your head! I promise you'll make my day.**


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